Nuggets Malone dishes on Kevin McHale, other coaching issues

SAN ANTONIO — You were wondering: What does a coach who was fired after 24 games think about a coach who was fired after 11?

Nuggets head coach Michael Malone. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

So were we.

Turns out that answer is a lot. Nuggets coach Michael Malone a lot to get off his mind about McHale’s firing, if there would ever be coaches in one a place for 20 years like San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, the notion of coaches losing the locker room, and everything in between.

Prior to the Nuggets game at San Antonio, Malone was asked if he thought there would be another instance of coaches being fixtures at one place, as Popovich has been.

“I doubt it,” Malone said. “Jerry Sloan was the same in Utah. Now you have a guy like Pop here. It speaks to not only his coaching ability, but to the culture they created over many, many years. And it takes that many years to build that.

“But from (owner) Peter Holt to (general manager) R.C. (Buford) to Pop to all of the great people they’ve had come through this system, I don’t think you’ll see that, not in this day and age of the NBA where you can go from the Western Conference Finals and 11 games into the season be fired. I was fired 24 games into my second season. So, expect the unexpected in the NBA. But guys like Pop and Jerry Sloan, I don’t know how many other guys would have a chance to be somewhere for that long.”

When Malone was fired as head coach of the Kings, players scratched their heads as to why. He’d connected with combustible center DeMarcus Cousins, which no coach prior to him had been able to accomplish in a meaningful way. He was in the midst of enacting real change for a team that desperately wanted to relive its glory days of deep playoff runs when they let him go.

Kevin McHale was axed mostly due to a disconnection between his message and the athletes on the team, according to Houston general manager Daryl Morey.

On the subject of coaches losing the locker room, Malone was matter of fact.

“It’s funny, when I got fired in Sac…it was loud and clear that I didn’t lose the locker room,” Malone said. “I think once I got fired the organization lost the team, in a weird way. As far as this, I don’t know, they’re 11 games in, they’ve had some injuries. But you go to the Western Conference Finals and 11 games in you’ve lost the locker room? I find that hard to believe.

“I’ve been around my whole life through my father and I’ve been in the NBA for 15 years. You do hear stories that the players have had enough, they’ve gotten sick and tired of a coach’s voice — too hard, too grating, I’m not sure. But I’d be surprised if that was really the case in Houston with a guy like Kevin McHale, who played in the NBA for such a long time at a high level, that he lost that locker room. It was just a tough start, and in this business the guy who gets the blame is the coach. That’s the way it goes. We all sign up for it and we know the rules.”

Follow Chris Dempsey on Twitter @dempseypost or email him at cdempsey@denverpost.com

An interesting article. Players’ league on so many levels in a way that isn’t true of any other major sport. Yeah, Pop and Sloan are/were great coaches but they both had the benefit of durable hall of fame player talent over many years in markets where pro hoops was the only game in town. Sometimes things line up in a way no one could have anticipated ahead of time. Doesn’t take away from their great accomplishments but not sure Pop or Sloan are models in any way for a coach of the Nuggets or any other team. The ‘culture’ in the NBA has far more to do with player talent than it does with ‘great’ coaches. Coaches on teams with inferior talent will lose their jobs pretty quickly. I agree with Malone that the trend has accelerated in a strange way–Karl got blown out of town after setting records here and in a weird twist ended up with a harder to explain ownership than Josh and Crew. Having said all that, the Houston situation is odd for sure.

Chris Dempsey arrived at The Denver Post in Dec. 2003 after seven years at the Boulder Daily Camera, where he primarily covered the University of Colorado football and men's basketball teams. A University of Colorado-Boulder alumnus, Dempsey covers the Nuggets and also chips in on college sports.